The 1985 film Adavi Donga, with Chiranjeevi, Radha, Sharada, Rao Gopal Rao. And various animals. Directed by K. Raghavendra Rao.

A favourite among my many favourite Indian film numbers.

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The post Dance number from Adavi Donga that makes Lidsville look less drug-induced appeared first on Ouno Design.

India’s Gulabi gang in beautiful pink. Gulabi means “rose” in rose.”

“The Gulabi gang is a group of women vigilantes active across North India. It is named after the pink saris worn by its members.

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India has the best inventory of vintage and antique furniture—both institutional and domestic—I’ve ever seen. Especially deco and moderne (bench above) not to mention traditional Indian wooden furniture of various vintages.

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This is a poor photo of a very interesting bottle, despite the fact that the boy running this soda cart in Mysore was being super helpful. (Below, some clearer photos of this type of bottle, courtesy of Wikipedia.) This is known as the Codd-neck bottle and you can read a full history and explanation below, but in short, the bottle is sealed via the use of a glass marble held in place by the pressure of the aerated soda; pressing the marble down either with a thumb or wooden plunger releases the seal, dropping the marble into the curved cavity and allowing the soda to pour out.

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The post Beautiful re-usable Codd-neck soda bottles still in use in India appeared first on Ouno Design.

This is a hodgepodge of painted walls in India, where I have been travelling for the past five weeks. All of these are in South India (Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa). The buildings are generally made of laterite stone sealed with cement (see previous post).

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What appear to be red bricks below (at left in the photo, and on the wall surrounding the yellow building) are in fact quarried blocks of laterite, a porous red stone common in India and other countries.

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This is a bit divorced from design—apologies. But I believe design touches every other sphere in a human Venn diagram, if there were such a thing. (See the About section in the sidebar.) I attended the Jaipur Literature Festival this past week, and for reasons that have to do with Rushdie and also have nothing to do with Rushdie, it was one of those events that subsequently affects everything you do or make.

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English architect Edwin Lutyens designed much of the British colonial power’s New Delhi between 1912 and 1930, and his aesthetic dominates the city. While in Delhi I have been staying in a Lutyens-designed house, now a guesthouse in walking distance from the famed Lodi Gardens and from India Gate, also designed by Lutyens.

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Read about Khan Market here.

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“Most Indian households use a rounded terracotta drinking water vessel — a matlo — that cools water to 14° below ambient temperature without refrigeration. Our matlo is a slip-cast version which has evolved to incorporate filtration and could be batch-produced from a mould.

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The post Matlo, based on the traditional water cooler called matka, by Doshi Levien appeared first on Ouno Design.